22.12.07

December 22 is the feast day of Blessed Jacopone da Todi (d. December 25, 1306), one of the Franciscan spirituals. In a post this summer I mentioned that an article in the Catholic Encyclopedia singled out Jacopone da Todi and Dante as "mouthpieces of an ultra-spiritual and impossible Catholicism." Pope Boniface VIII, Dante's bitter enemy, imprisoned Jacopone for his extreme views calling for the Franciscans to return to the poverty of life embraced by St. Francis. This point of view was supported by Celestine V, the disgraced predecessor of Boniface VIII.

Jacopone was born Jacopo Benedetti, son of a noble family in Todi whose life changed when his pious wife was killed. Like Dante, Jacopone's literary influence was heightened because he wrote in the vernacular, and his popular hymns (laude) helped spread his love of strict penance and absolute poverty. His most famous composition, if it can reliably be attributed to him, is the famous sequence Stabat mater dolorosa (selections below, with my translation).